Google Music Manager now available for Linux

Google has (finally) released the Music Manager PC client for Linux, meaning work-arounds like WINE are no longer necessary. You can download pre-packaged binaries in either .rpm or .deb format, ready to install on many popular Linux systems. This is a closed source project, so if you're not using a Linux distro that can parse a deb or rpm package, you'll have to convert it to your preferred package type with a program like Alien, or extract the archive and manually inspect the install script (I'll drop those ubergeek instructions after the break for those interested).

Along with official Linux support, Linux versions of Google Music Manager also support .ogg files, by transcoding them to 320kbps .mp3 files. This is the same way it handles FLAC files, and while not perfect, we're not going to complain because any support is better than none. Getting it installed is easy -- just fire up your web browser (on your Linux computer, of course) and head to music.google.com. Once there, click the "add music" link, and download the client. It seems pretty solid, and certainly better than using the (not an)emulated Windows version.

.deb files are a type of archive and many programs can extract them, including MC, 7zip, File Roller, etc. If you prefer to just do it the simple, old-fashioned way using the terminal, you'll use the "ar" and "tar" commands to extract the data tarball like so:

ar -p <package-name>.deb data.tar.gz | tar -zvx

Once you have the files, look for the postinst script for any install or clean up details, and copy the directory structure manually. Hit the forums if you run into a snag.